Clients come with various budget constraints and expectations, and this is one of those areas where as a solution provider, it presents an opportunity to challenge myself. Case in point, I had a client who wanted a particular solution, but did not have the budget, or perhaps did not want to expend the investment necessary for what they were looking for. Regardless, I wanted to work with this client, and I wanted to challenge myself to develop a solution within their very anemic budget.
The solution was building the whole site on top of the Tumblr platform. Check it out here. This ensures that there was no ongoing hosting cost. Secondly, we did not have to worry about security, because Tumblr is a top level social media platform and they are secure. Thirdly, it was a showcase of what was possible within a limited budget constraint. Let’s dig deeper into this.
You can build your e-commerce without hiring a web developer.
Building a website or any other web solution does not requires extensive knowledge of various programming languages, and yes while those do help definitely, today however if one is willing to invest the time in learning various platforms like WordPress or Magento, you can build your own website or other web solutions without knowledge of a programming language.
Now why would this be an option? In those instances where clients have engaged me for a particular project albeit within aggressive budget constraint, I’ve followed the path of helping them flesh out exactly what they are looking for. And furthermore helping them arrive at a solution that they can implement themselves.
Using content management platforms to build your website.
Let’s say you wanted to build a professional e-commerce website, well in that instance there is a lot to take in to consideration. And that thought alone can be daunting, However with an e-commerce management system like Shopify or Magento which is free, you can build a professional e-commerce website with every single bit of the bells and whistles as someone with extensive programming knowledge can put together.
Consider that those with extensive knowledge in programming do not build their own e-commerce websites, because that takes far too much time and will not offer as many features as the systems already available. Professionals and amateurs alike utilize platforms like WordPress, Shopify, Drupal and Squarespace among many others to develop top-notch websites and e-commerce because those platforms have been reviewed extensively, they have been contributed to, updated, and streamlined.
Content management systems make the process of building a website, which can take a year or more and compress the time down to a fraction of it. Furthermore anyone can pick up and learn a particular content manage system. They are extensive enough that an amateur can pick up Shopify and put together a professional e-commerce website in quick order, and someone who is a professional can do the same and perhaps add more to it if they wish. But both will be able to put together a functioning professional e-commerce website.
Building something online? There’s probably already a solution you can build from.
Time is the key factor here, and if you have the time to learn a particular new subject or series of subjects within a domain, then a budget constraint is not an issue. In fact the way that most professionals became so is that they had their own projects that they wanted to build and had to learn themselves.
The lack of knowledge in HTML, CSS, or any other programming language should not be a deterrent to building any idea or solution you have in mind. Certainly spending time to learn software languages pertinent to building a particular solution you want is always ideal, however if time isn’t available for that then you can learn it yourself, or allocate the necessary investment to have someone else to develop it while you focus on the operations of your business or idea.
With solutions like WordPress, which allows you to build any type of professional website, or Shopify when it comes to building an e-commerce website; No, you do you not need to know HTML, CSS, or any programming language in order to build what you want.
